Odessa - Europe on the Black Sea

so the morning after our arrival we meet Tamara our guide for our time in Odessa- and we start on a walking tour of the area closer to our hotel (The Bristol) - shown below in the first two photos-

the Philharmonic- right across the street-

you can see we had pretty awful weather - rainy and cold and WINDY (Chicago style weather - LOL)- below the inevitable Pushkin statue-

many many beautiful buildings - a stunningly beautiful city that probably should get way more attention as a destination than it does-

even the man hole covers are attractive- LOL with city symbol of the anchor -

and the McDonald's doesn't look like any of our golden arches monstrosities-

our first lengthy stop was for the fabulous archeology museum-

then a walk along the promenade- to the famous Potemkin Steps- known to every film student in the world - from the Eisenstein movie -

since we all three were having knee issues we took the funicular up and down -

continuing on through the city with a stop for lunch along the way-

after our lunch we split up with Iryna - and we head to the partisan catacombs under the city with Tamara and Iryna goes shopping - but more on that later... stay tuned -